Newly released Iraq war documents paint a devastating portrait of apparent U.S. indifference to a pattern of murder and torture by the Iraqi army, raising new questions about the Obama administration’s plans to transfer the nation’s security operations to Iraqi units.

WikiLeaks’ Friday afternoon release of more than 400,000 secret U.S. field reports — which the Pentagon quickly dismissed as a series of distorted “snapshots” — reveals the deaths of at least six Iraqis in custody and the maltreatment of dozens more at the hands of American-backed Iraqi security forces.

As recently as December 2009, American forces received a video apparently showing Iraqi officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar, a town in northern Iraq, according to the classified reports.

“Ten [Iraqi army] soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee,” says the log report. “The detainee had his hands bound. ... The footage shows the [Iraqi] soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him."

The report identified at least one suspected perpetrator by name, but the coalition forces reportedly decided "no investigation is necessary" and passed the information to the same Iraqi units that had been implicated in the killing.

Taken collectively, the logs document a clear double standard: Allegations against British and U.S. forces were subject to a formal investigation process, while Iraqi units were reportedly allowed to torture, harass and even kill their own countrymen with impunity.

Still, in a few instances, the often rambling and unsubstantiated accounts of soldiers and Iraqi detainees in the WikiLeaks documents point to possible misdeeds by American troops during the arrests.

They include allegations that U.S. soldiers ordered suspected insurgents into humiliating positions reminiscent of the abuses at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. In another incident, an American service member reportedly used a marker to scrawl a slur across the forehead of a weeping detainee.

The controversial WikiLeaks document dump — published simultaneously on the websites of The New York Times, Germany’s Der Speigel and the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper — casts fresh doubts on an ongoing U.S. strategy that depends heavily on empowering a credible, competent and law-abiding Iraqi army.

A Pentagon spokesman didn’t respond to specific allegations included in the documents but took the same view as officials adopted when WikiLeaks released its first bombshell — a batch of classified military documents relating to the Afghanistan war — in July.

“They are essentially snapshots of events, both tragic and mundane, and do not tell the whole story,” said Geoff Morrell, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

“However, it does expose secret information that could make our troops even more vulnerable to attack in the future," Morrell said. “Just as with the leaked Afghan documents, we know our enemies will mine this information looking for insights into how we operate, cultivate sources and react in combat situations, even the capability of our equipment. This security breach could very well get our troops and those they are fighting with killed.”

The Pentagon made similar claims about the controversial nonprofit in July but has yet to produce evidence that the release of the Afghanistan documents resulted in the deaths of any U.S. troops or allies.

Other revelations in Friday’s release include:

Iran apparently played a significant role in supporting the insurgency. In late 2006, American military officials in Baghdad issued a secret warning that a senior Shiite militia commander — trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, an elite force — was seeking to kidnap American soldiers.

While in detention, suspected Iraqi insurgents were shackled, subjected to whipping, blows to the head and back, kicking and electric shocks, blindfolded, and hung by the wrists or ankles.

A U.S. helicopter gunship involved in the killing of a news cameraman had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.

More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. The logs record 66,081 noncombatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.